from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some crowdfunding projects are really impressive and have gotten a lot of attention and praise that is well deserved. However, there are also quite a few projects that haven't quite lived up to their promise. It's disappointing to say the least when a project gets over a million bucks and still fails to deliver a working product to its backers. Some backers get upset when their favorite crowdfunded project sells out to Facebook. How can companies like Kickstarter and Indiegogo and the like deal with these problems? There might be escrow schemes or insurance policies that could help, but in the end, it seems like buyer beware is the ultimate answer. Here are just a few links on this situation of dealing with crowdfunding disappointments and outright scams.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We've seen plenty of different input devices, but it's pretty hard to displace the traditional keyboard and mouse combination. Touchscreens have their usefulness (but perhaps not on a 20" 4K display), and maybe someday gesture recognition will be more common outside of gaming. Ultimately, we're likely to see more and more options for how to best interact with various kinds of software, and that's a good thing. Here are just a few more examples of cool digital interfaces.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

In the US, over half of the mobile phones people are using are smartphones, so it's not surprising that there's a nascent market for smart devices trying to take advantage of this existing user base. Wearables like smartwatches and smartglasses are nifty gadgets, but there could be other smart-things that might be hanging around necks or strapped to our arms in the near future. One feature for all of these smart accessories could be personal protection -- allowing the wearer to signal to friends/family/police in an emergency situation. Here are just a few examples (that are available for pre-order or need some crowdfunding love).

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Most of the time, when people are talking about nuclear energy, they're talking about fission. Fission gets all the attention because it's already commercially available, and every so often there's an accident that makes the news and scares people away from all kinds of nuclear energy. But fusion is entirely different. Aside from the fact that no one has ever actually built a reactor that has generated more useful energy than needed to ignite atomic fusion (hydrogen bombs don't count!), fusion energy could be a great source of energy. We've covered fusion a few times before, but here are just a few more interesting links on fusing atoms together.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Not too long ago, cameras seemed to be integrated into nearly everything -- with some folks wondering when toasters or dishwashers would come with built-in cameras. Thankfully, though, the upcoming "internet of things" doesn't seem to want to take photos of everything (yet). We've covered a few new-fangled cameras before, so here are just a few other camera systems that might get popular soon.

from the whoops dept

Last week, of course, there was a big story about PayPal freezing Mailpile's IndieGoGo funds, and then making absolutely insane requests for details about their project, including detailed financials and itemized budget of the project. After the story got some press, PayPal quickly changed course, released the freeze (and contributed $1,000 to the campaign themselves). A PR person from the company reached out to us, and I sent back a series of questions, and was told that answers would be forthcoming. Except, they weren't. Yesterday, I was told (1) that the company spokesman "is unavailable this week" and (2) that they "cannot provide any specifics on a customer account due to PayPal's privacy policy." That seemed odd, because nothing in the questions I asked involved violating any privacy issues. I merely pointed out that IndieGoGo has been around for quite some time, and this couldn't be the first time this came up, so I was hoping for a further explanation over why Mailpile set off the alarm bells.

Instead, the PR person pointed me to two links. The first was a blog post from PayPal's President, David Marcus, promising a more "customer first" approach that avoids those kinds of "false positives." The post -- which was written a few days before PayPal froze Mailpile's account -- notes that the company had gotten away from a customer-centric focus, and they were hearing too many media stories about terrible experiences people were having because of PayPal's screwed up process. There are two specific promises in that blog post which it appears that PayPal totally flopped on when it came to MailPile. First, it insists that they need to "take more risks," by which he means "catch more bad guys and way fewer good guys." In fact, he claims that they've already "tweaked" their system and "Hundreds of thousands of customers who may have experienced holds last year based on our policies are no longer impacted."

The other promise is that PayPal would "be human." It notes that the company has changed its policies and now "gives the benefit of the doubt to the seller." Once again, that didn't seem to work at all when it came to Mailpile. Meanwhile, while I apparently didn't qualify to speak to someone at PayPal, they did send someone out to talk to other sites like Ars Technica and Security Ledger, where they just kept pointing back to that Marcus blog post about how they're really working hard to do a better job.

Of course, a few hours after the media started picking up on this, PayPal once again admitted the error and reversed course. However, relying on media attention as the check and balance in your broken algorithm doesn't seem like the most effective of systems.

I think PayPal might want to go back to tweaking those algorithms. Especially that "be human" one.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Dead languages don't change and evolve. It's the languages that people speak the most that develop new words and new dialects. In the past, it's been difficult to track the evolution of language, but with more and more wiretapped phonecalls digital voice recordings available for analysis, linguists are in a better position to study how languages are changing. Here are just a few interesting links on language dialects.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The human body harbors many more microbial cells than human cells. There are at least 10,000 different types of organisms on (and in) a healthy person, and finding out how our bodies interact with these microbes could help us understand how diseases are transmitted (or perhaps created). It's a huge task to study trillions of cells, so some microbiome projects are turning to crowdfunding and citizen scientists to help out. Here are just a few interesting links on the nascent field of mapping our microbial friends.

from the put-down-the-popcorn dept

Well, we may have found at least a temporary answer to the question of "just how far will Charles Carreon dig?" According to Mark Lemley, one of the lawyers representing IndieGoGo against Carreon, Charles Carreon has just dismissed his lawsuit. One hopes this means that he's finally realized that this entire process was a mistake. A broad apology for massive overreaction after massive overreaction from Carreon (and his wife who apparently referred to us at Techdirt as a "nazi scumbag") might be nice, but if it's just a general admission that he had gone too far, that seems good enough. Of course, given how far he went, and his repeated insistence on not giving up, I do wonder if this is really the end of all of this. Somehow I doubt it. This is a voluntary dismissal, which means he could refile. But, for a brief moment, it appears that he's stopped digging.

Update: Carreon is apparently declaring victory, claiming that the lawsuit gave him what he wanted. Uh, yeah. He sued to make sure that Matthew Inman and IndieGoGo did exactly what they said they were going to do... and then when they did exactly what they promised to do, he claims that's a victory? At best, he did two things: had Inman limit the donations to just two charities rather than four, and made Inman take some of his own money out of the bank to photograph it (as promised) for Funnyjunk, rather than use the actual money raised during the IndieGoGo campaign. If his goal there was to force that to prevent embarrassment I don't see how that's a victory. Does anyone honestly believe that Carreon came out of this with a better reputation than if he'd just let the original plans happen? Carreon could still face requests for legal fees from those he sued, though it wouldn't surprise me if they all just dropped it. Carreon seems to think the newfound attention he's received is a good thing, which just shows how completely out of touch he is. As Ars Technica notes:

But if the defendants pursued attorney's fees, the attention might be worth it for Charles Carreon. After asking for comment on his voluntary dismissal of charges, Carreon lilted over the phone, "I'm famous, I'm notorious." Which, from the looks of it, is exactly what he wants.

There are times that it's worthwhile to be notorious. And there are times that it's not. This is the second one.

from the declaratory-judgment dept

Another day, another story about Charles Carreon digging himself a deeper and deeper hole. This time, it starts with him threatening to sue both the person who set up the parody site charles-carreon.comand Register.com, where the domain was registered. Register.com failed to live up to its own "privacy" promises regarding registration info, and exposed the name and personal info of the person who registered the site after receiving a letter from Carreon, despite direct promises to the person's lawyer. After another phone call in which the lawyer, Paul Levy, warned Register.com that it faced breach of contract charges, it made the info private again.

However, Carreon continued to threaten the blogger, leading to a rather bizarre exchange between Carreon and Levy, which relates to some history that Carreon has had with Levy's organization, Public Citizen, and a case we wrote about last year, involving a website run by Carreon and his wife. In the end, the owner of charles-carreon.com felt sufficiently threatened by Carreon's claims that s/he has decided to file for declaratory judgment to stop Carreon from suing. Part of the reason for seeking declaratory judgment was Carreon's direct threat to go after the blogger at a later date in various jurisdictions. He also threatened to use the DMCA takedown process to try to censor the site, because it uses a photo he claims copyright over. There's significant irony in the fact that Carreon is now threatening to abuse the DMCA process to stifle speech -- when what kicked this whole thing off was his DMCA-based defense of Funnyjunk and its failure to remove copyright-covered images.

Carreon's threat-letter response to Levy is something to behold, and can be viewed towards the bottom of the filing (pdf and embedded below). Here's a key part:

As far as when and where I will sue your client, be certain that it will occur if your client does not cede the domain, and advise her of ten things:

There there is essentially no statute of limitations on this claim, and the prima facie laches defense would not kick in for at least three years.

That venue in this action can be validly laid in at least three places, maybe four, if she doesn't live in Arizona, Florida, or California.

That I am capable of employing counsel to handle my claim against her, who will incur attorneys fees and seek recovery of the same. I filed pro se against Inman simply for sake of convenience and the need for speed, and not from a lack of resources.

That the law in this area cannot be predicted with certainty, will evolve substantially over the next three years, during which I will be using digital forensics to establish actual trademark damages in addition to seeking the maximum cybersquatting penalty of $100,000.

That a judgment that recites that the domain was obtained by fraud upon the registrar, in the form of a misrepresentation that she did not know of my trademark on the name, might well be non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.

That a judgment can be renewed indefinitely until collected, and that California judgments accrue 10% interest, which can compound once ever ten years by capitalizing the accumulated interest.

That you cannot guarantee that Public Citizen will provide her with free legal services on June 1, 2015, when I may very well send the process server 'round to her door.

That I have the known capacity to litigate appeals for years (check my Westlaw profile, and of course, the drawn out history of Penguin v. American Buddha, now in its third year, having passed through the Second Circuit and the NYCA, and still hung up in personal jurisdiction in the SDNY).

That the litigation, being of first impression in virtually every Circuit, grounded in a federal question, involving a registered trademark, and dispositive of many open issues in the field of Internet commerce and speech, might very well continue for a decade.

That Public Citizen might well be unable and/or unwilling to provide her with representation until the resolution of such an extended course of litigation.

He goes on to chide Levy and Public Citizen for "leaping to the defense of someone who is in league with a person who has harnessed the lowest impulses of puerile, vituperative Internet youth to generate a Charitable Fund that has been used to bribe two major charities into tacitly endorsing a campaign that is utterly devoid of charitable purpose, and is a mere cover for a hate campaign."

Uh, yeah. At best, this demonstrates that Carreon still has no clue about what's happening. He still thinks that there's some big campaign against him, and he's still lashing out without realizing that every time he does so he just draws more negative attention to himself. Most people tend to learn that when doing something makes the situation worse, they shouldn't keep doing it. Carreon seems unable to make that basic connection. The rather blatant threats against the blog owner -- to go after her in multiples jurisdictions and at a later date when Public Citizen might not be able to take her case -- are examples of the exact wrong way to handle something like this. It's an old-fashioned lawyer attitude: take an extreme position that you can back down from later. But in this case, it just seems to display -- quite vividly for the judge -- Carreon's true intentions: to be such a nuisance that people stop mocking him. One of these days, he may discover that each time he does that, he's only encouraging more and more ridicule.

Oh, and in the meantime, as for his attempt at getting a temporary restraining order to stop the money raised from being distributed, the judge has asked for proof that the charities have received the money -- as has been stated by IndieGoGo and Matthew Inman. If that is shown to be true, it seems likely that the judge will find no reason to consider the TRO request any more, since it's meaningless.